Carnival Town
by prettynpink55
Summary: And now they are broken. Post-Resurrection, SV...dark!fic
1. Carousel i

**Title:** Carnival Town  
**Author:** Alli [prettynpink55]  
**Timeline/Spoilers:** Post "Resurrection"  
**Author's Note:** Yeah, so, this story actually isn't going to be too long, maybe four chapters or so. Something along those lines. Also, parts of this chapter are flashbacks, which I think you'll probably be able to figure out.

**Feedback:** Makes my world go round :)

****

**one.**

**carousel, i. **

_Round 'n round  
Carousel  
Has got you under it's spell  
Moving so fast...but  
Going nowhere_

**-Norah Jones, _Carnival Town_**

The problem with revenge is that it never feels as good as you expect it to.  
  
It'll never be like it is in the movies, books, television shows, plays. It'll never be _The Princess Bride_ fantasy. You know _The Princess B_ride fantasy. You know how nice it must sound to slice someone through and through with a sword while repeating over and over _"My name is Inigo Montoya/You killed my father/Prepare to die."_  
  
Retribution is such a beautiful word for something so revolting You're left with someone else's blood on your hands and no amount of scrubbing will ever wash that away. No amount of scalding showers will melt it into nothing.  
  
He had a dream that his hands were bleeding someone else's blood. He woke up to find himself beside the sink with the water running.  
  
_Out damn spot/Out I say._  
  
The showers he takes at night are scalding hot or freezing cold, hopes that one of the extremities will wash away this layer of skin that he wishes he doesn't have.

---

He feels a pang of guilt while clenching the steering wheel tightly, beginning to realize just how long it's been since he last drove to visit her. A few months since he stared out over the dark road with Lauren's fingers laced through his own. It was a little too warm for comfort that night, but he liked the way her hair blew back slightly next to the open window, the way she laughed slightly at something on the radio, the way each street lamp they passed under lit up her engagement ring, like a spotlight an a mirror.  
  
They had been supposed to get there at 5:00 but stumbled in more around 10:30, results of late conference calls on her part and classes going overtime on his part and the traffic, which wasn't really either of their faults but he wanted to blame on her. She was charming around his mother, but then again, she was charming around everyone. Something, he realized later, that was probably taught to her. Fake fake all fake. He wonders how she was trained. If she was taught when to laugh and when to be understanding and when to be vulnerable and when to cry. If she was told exactly how to fix her hair and which clothes she should wear and how she should kiss him, touch him. Maybe it's a class. Seduction Of A CIA Officer 101.  
  
He wonders how many of those engaging little anecdotes she told his mom were true and how many were figments of her imagination. She talked about her parents' farm and family vacations to London. Marie recounted summers in Fleury and the times that Michael would crash his bike into the neighbor's cars and _No Maman, don't tell her that story, she doesn't want to hear that one..._  
  
"No, I do!" Lauren grinned.  
  
She woke him up the next morning before the dawn had reached up and whispered that she had to go. Robert Lindsey oh that bastard called, I'm so sorry, I have to fly out to Barcelona in two hours, I'll take a cab to the airport, thank your mom for me and tell her what a great time I had meeting her, I'll make it up to you I promise, love you.  
  
He was still half asleep at that point, murmuring slightly incoherently. "Love you, Lauren," he meant to say.  
  
He said the wrong goddamn name.  
  
She kissed him goodbye and didn't mention it.  
  
He should've noticed the cologne on her clothes.

---

He passes by the carousel that's been there since he was a kid. The paint on the wooden horses is chipped and fading where it used to be thick and vibrant. The music they play is the same, a tinkering kind of melody that he can't quite identify. The man who runs it died some fifteen odd years ago and his son has since then taken over, sitting behind a ticket booth from noon to seven every day. Maybe he had a different job before this. He now dispenses small pieces of heavy paper to families for admission and ushers kids on and off.  
  
The man probably took the job because it ran in his family and his father did it and because he feels a sense of pride, despite that fact that his life's hell thanks to his goddamn father and his goddamn job and this isn't the life he wants to lead...  
  
Family honor.  
  
That's all it is.  
  
He wants to feel like he's doing this all for a better reason than the man behind the ticket booth at the merry-go-round.  
  
But is there a difference between working at the CIA and working at a carousel if they're both for the same reason?  
  
He pulls the car over.

---

He helped his mother clean the dirty dishes from breakfast, tracing his fingers over the ugly floral pattern that adorned the edges. They were a wedding present, she explained when he asked her once why she didn't just buy new kitchenware.  
  
"::What did you think?::" he asked, soaking up the excess moisture from the tea cup with a hand towel.  
  
"::About what?::"  
  
"::About _Lauren_.::" His tone was slightly more exasperated then he meant it to be, but Jesus, what else would he be talking about?  
  
"::Oh.::" She reached for the next dish. "::She seemed very nice. Funny. Sweet. I liked her. Beautiful, too.::"  
  
"::Yeah,::" he responded after a moment's hesitation. "::She's very pretty.::"  
  
_Beautiful_ was a word he reserved only for Sydney.  
  
"::We're getting married, Maman.::"  
  
He expected smiles and tears and hugs and kisses and "congratulations" and "have you set a date yet?"  
  
He expected reaction.  
  
Instead, she reached for a clean sponge, picking up another dirty plate from the pile.  
  
"::Did you hear me?::"  
  
She ran the dish under the hot water and winced as the cone of water splashed out slightly, leaving dark droplets on his t-shirt.  
  
"::Maman, I said I'm getting married.::"  
  
"::I heard you, Michel.::"  
  
She shut off the water and passed the plate slowly to him.  
  
"::Be careful with that one. It has a crack down the middle.::"  
  
He stared at her for a moment before slamming the dish down on the counter. The hideous floral patterns exploded into a thousand shards.

---

The carousel starts again and Vaughn slowly walks past it, watching as the horses slowly revolve. Round and round. The horses never go anywhere, just round and round in a circle until they're back where they started, a full rotation. Occasionally they move up and down on the metal poles, but that's the extent of their movement.  
  
His favorite one had always been the pale green one. He looks for it, but it's now a shade of mustard yellow.  
  
Sydney had always like the way dried rice felt in her hands. He had never really understood that, but could see why she liked the feeling of things in her hands. Things were tangible and could be felt without actually trying.  
  
He'll kill her. Oh God, he might just try to hurt her if she were standing here right now.  
  
Lielielielielielielie.  
  
Because he's constantly torn between wanting to kiss her and wanting to perform bodily harm to her and the former always seems to win somehow, no matter how much willpower he [pretends to?] have. This will drive him crazy and she will be the death of him, but she must know that somehow. She must like the reactions she can get out of him. She must like how he's the one thing in her life that she can manipulate. Unintentionally possibly, intentionally probably.  
  
He flips through the pack of postcards slowly, letting his fingers hit the cardboard. He pulls off the tan rubber band and reads the back of each one for what must be the hundredth time, as if the hundred and first time will reveal something new.  
  
But no, it's the same each time. Each one a message written in black magic marker with her familiar handwriting, neat and curvy.  
  
**WISH YOU WERE HERE.**

**---**

The ocean looks like it's freezing, but the younger kids who have yet to understand the drastic differences between hot and cold and happiness and pain jump right in, shivering blue lips and all.  
  
The wind gusts harder and his first reaction is to let the postcards go, fly away, let the breeze take them and never have to deal with this insanity again. He holds on to them. His pieces of Sydney.  
  
He reaches into his pocket and fingers something small, round, cool. Weiss joked that he should just pawn it off, but quickly stopped laughing when he saw the look on his friend's face.  
  
"You're right," he said briskly. "That's not funny."  
  
Getting rid of it would be like admitting defeat. He threw it in the back of his desk drawer at his apartment and sped home later that night, breaking all of LA's traffic laws and probably a few more. He turned the key in the lock frantically [openopenopen] and raced back to his study. Jammed it on his ring finger so hard that he left a red mark at the bottom of it. He could steady his breaths when he wore it, twisting the piece of metal around. He felt almost whole again [almost.] He wouldn't take it off until work the next morning. It felt like something ripped out of his chest.  
  
Vaughn stares at it now, letting the gold catch glints of the dying sunlight.  
  
He could throw it into the water if he were really bold, watch as the waves carry it away into nothing. Because everything just drifts into nothing eventually, doesn't it?  
  
No, he won't be rebellious today, not now at least. He slips the ring back into his pocket. He still likes the way the metal feels against his skin.

---

She dropped off the face of the planet after traveling to Wittenberg, although what she found there he never figured out. Two days of nothing drove him to the bank, but the box was already empty.  
  
His wife's last words weren't even words. Her dying breath was simply numbers.  
  
Numbers are numbers are numbers are numbers. Yesterday, they were numbers. Today, they are numbers. Tomorrow, they will be numbers. Numbers can't lie and numbers can't hurt. They are figures and they are fact. He wants his life in numbers.  
  
But no, no one knew anything about the young woman who had come in to the bank a few days ago, sorry sir. If there's anything else we can help you with, just let us know. And while you're here, would you like to start an account?  
  
No, he does not want to start a fucking account. No, he does not want something to drink. But those bank security cameras...could I see the tapes?  
  
We don't usually make it a habit of handing out bank security tapes, Mr. Vaughn.  
  
Make it a habit, he found himself barking. 

---

He used to think that the story of his parent's marriage was romantic, not because of how they met and the way they loved each other, but because their families hated each other. Despised one another. His mother's parents didn't understand why she couldn't marry someone that lived within their own country and oh Marie, he's American, and you know how they are. They're all about their bagels and their guns.  
  
And William, Bill, my Billy, I know that I'm your mother and not here to judge, but couldn't you have found a nice..._American_ girl to marry?  
  
"No, Mom," he sighed, exasperated. "This is the one I want."  
  
"I get it," Weiss once said. "You've got the Romeo and Juliet Syndrome. Understandable."  
  
And so Thanksgivings were miserable and Christmases were even worse and Marie just stopped trying to pull both their families together for the holidays, because it would always inevitably end up with her father-in-law going, "Do you want to know what the problem with the French is?"  
  
And that's just the way it was.  
  
His last name was almost Vaughn-Rousseau, actually, a combination of both families' names, but no, the Vaughns would not have a grandson with a French last name. He'll forever be silently grateful for his grandparent's intolerance. "Vaughn" sounds better on Sydney's lips than "Vaughn-Rousseau" ever would.  
  
It should've been raining on the day of his father's funeral. It should have been dark and gray and pouring. It always did in movies and TV shows and when he asked his mother why it always did, she would simply reply, "Because heaven is crying, Michel."  
  
Heaven did not cry the day they lowered his father's body into the ground.  
  
It's hard to imagine people eating at funerals, but their house was filled to the brim with casseroles and fruit baskets and cracker platters. Family and friends and people from work he had never seen before and some that he had sat in the living room and ate the excessive amounts of green bean casserole. He didn't understand how they could have such an appetite. He felt like the way he had when he got the flu in kindergarten.  
  
He could switch between French and English without giving it a second thought when he remembered, but his parents would occasionally get a call or two from confused teachers, and yes, I'm looking at Michael's American Revolution report right now, I'm sure it would be very good if it were written in English...  
  
"::Dad would be sad to see you cry, Grandpa::," he said softly at their house after the burial, a stupid eight-year-old who thought that maybe he could be comforting in a way. Wasn't even thinking about which language he was trying to console him in. Isn't comfort universal?  
  
"Speak English, damn it! I don't know what the hell you're saying! Your dad died for this fucking country and you're a fucking American and you're going to act like one, goddamn it!"  
  
Harsh words for a little boy who was barely holding it together as it was.  
  
"::No, shh, shh, don't cry::," Marie whispered to him later on their porch steps. "::Don't cry.::"  
  
"Why does he hate me?" he asked through tears, the demands for him to speak English still fresh in his mind.  
  
"::He doesn't hate you. He loves you very much. He just misses his son.::"  
  
"It should be raining," he said absently, squinting into the bright sun.  
  
"::I know. Let's go.::"  
  
"Go where?"  
  
"::I don't know. I can't stay here anymore.::"  
  
People in movies don't leave their houses while guests are still there, no, no, they certainly don't, but she took his hand and led him to their beat up blue Toyota with the scratch down its side.  
  
But she had done her crying the night before and she'll do more crying tonight and she was not interested in hysterics right now, with people there, with people noticing her weakness.  
  
"There are still people in our house."  
  
"::I'm aware of that, Michel.::"  
  
"We can't just leave."  
  
"::Why not? Put on your seat belt.::"  
  
He stared at her for a moment [my mother's lost her mind] but pulled the seat belt across his chest and listened to the metal click. He had never sat in the front seat before.  
  
She drove him the ten minutes to the small pier near their house, the one with the carousel. He was the only boy on it in a suit and rode it nine and a half times. He would've gone for ten, but the motor broke down part of the way through. Wasn't fixed for another month.

---

The return to the office after Palermo was saturated with whispers and (in)discreetly pointed fingers, 'that's Michael Vaughn, did you hear about the other day, killed his wife is what they're saying and Sydney Bristow, oh where is she? Maybe he killed her, too...'  
  
He was now the murderer.  
  
The Joint Task Force will always be more like high school than a work place. Always. By the end of the day, the rumor was that he had killed his wife and then found out that Sydney was carrying his love child, turned the gun on her, now he was just bidding his time until...  
  
Jesus Christ.  
  
"You need to get back to the hospital."  
  
It was the first thing Weiss said to him upon his arrival, and for once he was grateful in the lack of questions.  
  
"I'm fine."  
  
"You're not fine. You're going to die of something stupid, like a collapsed lung."  
  
"There are worse ways to die."  
  
"You're driving us all up the fucking wall, Vaughn."  
  
The inevitable inquiry came later, in Weiss's five hundred year old Ford that he had inherited from his grandmother when he was in college.  
  
"Should I ask what happened?"  
  
"No," Vaughn stonewalled, keeping his gaze on the cars driving past their own. God, Eric Weiss was a slow driver.  
  
"Where's Sydney?"  
  
"I found out she was carrying my love child, so I killed her. Do you think that was wrong?"  
  
Conversation stopped after that. 

---

He stares at the backs of the postcards, the parts that read, "Greetings From London," or "Missing You In Berlin." They're glossy and colorful and covered in his fingerprints from being handled so much, but other than that, they're just postcards. He wants them to be more.  
  
Vaughn has a map hanging back at his office, one that now contains half a dozen colorful push pins marking everywhere he's received a message from her. London, Madrid, Paris, Berlin, Lisbon, Rome...he searched for a pattern, not because he thought that there'd be one, but because he likes patterns. He likes statistics. He likes the way equations look on paper.  
  
Funny, though, seeing as he got a D in tenth grade algebra.  
  
"These grades will get you nowhere, Mr. Vaughn" was the collective sigh from teachers. "You're just not trying."  
  
He should've moved in with Eric or rented a hotel room after he was released from the hospital that one final time ["We sure see you here a lot," one nurse remarked. The doctor clicked his tongue disapprovingly and locked the door to his hospital room, making sure there was no way they could have a repeat performance of what had happened just a day before] but he went home, slept in his own bed. He wanted to torture himself and didn't take down the pictures of the two of them and the smiling eyes of old photographs burned through him. He cut himself while trying to slice an apple and let himself bleed. He took out their wedding album and tried to play a game with himself, attempted to figure out which of the guests from her side had been Covenant. He counted seven that he recognized. Seven Covenant officials at his wedding. That one was in custody, that one was still on the run, that one was dead...he knew their names from smooth manila folders and had failed to make the initial connection.  
  
She came home with pearls on one night, a necklace he didn't recognize. The next week it was a pair of diamond earrings. The week after that was an emerald bracelet.  
  
Expensive gifts he had never bought her and other men's cologne.  
  
He woke up in the middle of the night clawing at his hands. Damn blood. 


	2. Carousel ii

**carousel, ii.**

He rings the doorbell once, twice, but there's no answer and no light on when he peers inside. There's something a little disconcerting about the fact that she's not home: are mothers supposed to have lives of their own? Aren't they like teachers, who live under their desks at school?  
  
He gropes around under the flower pot with her geraniums until he hits the spare key. It's always been an overly obvious hiding spot for a key, he used to explain to her, because under the "Welcome" mats are the first place that burglars and axe murderers look for the spare and then they move on to the flower pots and then...  
  
"::God, you really do live and breathe your job, don't you?::" she would roll her eyes. "::Your father used to be just like you.::"  
  
He likes the familiar smell of the house, the scent of lemon wood cleaner and dryer sheets. The living room, where she still has the bright orange furniture that's been there as long as he can remember. It looks like the home of people who have come, lived, and moved the hell on with their lives, old photographs of ghosts who will never be passing on through again. The ancient TV in the corner is covered in a layer of dust and he picks up a silver picture frame absently. He likes this picture, his parents on their wedding day. They probably never had to look back at their nuptial pictures to see if members of multinational terrorist organizations had attended.  
  
His mother and Lauren's parents had got along fine. What had they talked about, anyway? He can't remember. Something that involved laughter. There were no Montagues and Capulets. Her mother had not killed his father.  
  
The place is like a living diorama of a house from the 1970's. Twelve inch vinyls are lined up carefully next to a broken down record player that hasn't worked in years and snapshots of people he can't remember are scattered through out the residence, each one sporting bell bottoms and leisure suits. The rooms are screaming to be made into an "I LOVE THE SEVENTIES!" television special for VH-1.  
  
He drags his feet up the tan carpeting to the next floor, clomping as loud as he can. The silence is unsettling.

---

His father always told him to stop measuring time in minutes. He always said that if you're going to count anything, count sunrises and songs in the shower and dinners at home. That, he declared, is the key to a long and happy life.  
  
Ironically, the man died at age thirty-five. An extensive lifetime that sure was.  
  
At least he had his damn sunrises.

---

There was a hearing. An extensive one, one with senators and bright fluorescent lighting and podiums and microphones.  
  
"This is not a trial, Mr. Vaughn," they kept repeating. "We would just like to clear up a few things about what happened in Palermo."  
  
_Agent_, he wanted to correct them. _Agent_ Vaughn.  
  
"I need you to promise me something," Dixon muttered to him before the inquiry, pulling him aside in the rotunda. "Promise me you'll keep your temper in check. These people...they were acquaintances of Senator Reed's, friends of his. The fact that both he and his daughter are now dead...they're not exactly going to be in your favor here."  
  
"Be in my favor? How could this be a matter that people have an opinion on? She was a Covenant spy who leaked them government secrets! She betrayed me, she betrayed you, she betrayed this Agency, she betrayed this country—"  
  
"I know, Michael. I know."  
  
Dixon rubbed his eyes wearily, tired of this situation and tired of this job and just tired of it all.  
  
"They're going to ask you about Sydney and Jack."  
  
"I know."  
  
"What were you planning on telling them?"  
  
"The truth. That we haven't seen or heard from either of them in three weeks."  
  
"They're going to know some of the details surrounding the investigation for Sydney."  
  
He said this slowly, deliberately. _Yeah, details. You know which details I'm talking about.  
_  
"I know."  
  
"Just...just know what you're talking about when you get in there. I don't think I need to tell you that this is not a good situation that you're in the middle of."

---

He usually stays in the guest room when visiting his mom, the one in the basement that's painted a deep shade of coral he helped her pick out years ago. She always says that she'll clear out his old room one day, make more space for guests or books or something like that, but it still remains the same, a perfect reflection of the eighteen year old who used to live there. The hockey posters that adorn the walls are now creased and fading, much like the careers of the legends they used to depict. There's still the framed painting of the red type writer hanging above his bed [how, in any way, could that be considered art?] and still the same pale blue comforter.  
  
[_First kiss. Fifteen years old. Jenny Simons. On that bed when no one was home_.]  
  
God, he hates this house. He has no reason to, none at all, but he hates it all the same.  
  
[_First time. Seventeen years old. Anna Woodrich. On that bed when no one was home_.]  
  
His old hockey stick sits in the corner and he picks it up, pretending to pass around an imaginary puck. He guides it around the creaking desk, past his dresser, the door will be his goal, bring the stick back to shoot, puck spins, the crowd goes wild, the sportscasters hold their breaths and, _'This is it, Kent, the defining moment of the game, if Vaughn makes this shot, the Kings have just won the Stanley Cup, aaaannndddd..."_  
  
Of course he doesn't fucking make it. It's an imaginary puck and an imaginary goal.  
  
How do you win at something when none of it's real?

---

He falls asleep in his old bed. No surprises here. He doesn't think he's slept in weeks.

---

In retrospect, he probably should have listened to Dixon. Prepared for the hearing. Come up with a better story.  
  
He should have known by then that the truth had long since stopped being a weapon for his defense.  
  
"We would just like to remind you again, Mr. Vaughn, that this is not a trial."  
  
"Yes, you mentioned that before, thank you."  
  
There couldn't have been more than two dozen people there, maybe twenty- five, but their eyes. Their eyes bore straight through him, as if he were suddenly transparent.  
  
_Oh, they know what you did, Michael.  
  
You'll always be the man who killed his wife.  
  
They can see right through you.  
  
You'd better start running, kiddo._  
  
It's what his dad once said to him with an amused expression on his face when he found out his son had just broken his mother's favorite vase.  
  
_There might be a nice family in Canada who will take you in. But you're better start running, kiddo._  
  
"We were hoping maybe you could relay back to us what happened in Palermo."  
  
The man gave him his name at the beginning, although by the point it was completely lost on him as to what it actually was. Started with a "G."  
  
He could see his own reflection in the man's glasses.  
  
"What would you like to know?"  
  
"How Lauren Reed ended up dead, for starters."  
  
So. There would be no skirting around the issue, no polite questions with little relevance to the issue at hand.  
  
"Lauren Reed was a ranking member of the Covenant," he started slowly, choosing his words carefully. "Sent to infiltrate the CIA and steal confidential intel. She was responsible for the murder of numerous government employees, she...she shot and nearly killed an unarmed technical expert in the rotunda right before attempting to blow it up, she...she..."  
  
He was getting uneasy, desperate, grabbing at any straws he could.  
  
"Agent Bristow went after her when she heard Reed was in Italy," he went on after a deep breath. "But she was...it just didn't..."  
  
"Work out the way she had hoped?" the man asked, a mocking glint in his eyes. His voice had a dry edge to it, a hint of incredulity.  
  
"By the time I got there, Reed had her at gun point."  
  
"So you were, in fact, defending Agent Bristow."  
  
There came that voice again. The tone of a parent speaking to a six-year- old.  
  
"Lauren Reed wasn't exactly a woman who lived by a strict code of ethics," he spat out. "She wouldn't have hesitated to pull the trigger on Sydney."  
  
mistakemistakemistakemistake  
  
He could see Dixon close his eyes with a sigh, at the other end of the room but body language so bold that Vaughn could pick up on it from the stand.  
  
"Sydney? You would be referring to Agent Bristow?"  
  
"Yes. Agent Bristow."  
  
"You and Agent Bristow had some sort of relationship at one time, did you not?"  
  
Any movement in the room came to an abrupt standstill and...  
  
Oh, this was where they would get him. Twenty-five people conducting the hearing and he knew that they were all just itching to jump up, point their index fingers at him accusatively, you killed Lauren Reed you killed Lauren Reed and for a bad reason too, oh you killed your wife...  
  
_Don't fuck this up._  
  
"When they train you as a CIA operative, they teach you how to load a gun in fifteen seconds flat and how to take down four men at a time and how to diffuse a charge of C-4 using nothing but your bare hands. Out at the Farm, they tell you...they tell you that what you're doing will bring you glory, will bring you honor. They make sure that they leave out the actual darkness you see out in the field. They never explain what it feels like to watch someone you know slowly die from something as simple as faulty information or...or to experience betrayal, or to...to...they present you with lists. Page after page of lists, things you under no conditions do. It's all about restrictions and protocol and, quite frankly, the majority of it is pretty much disregarded. But the one rule that tops the list, the one that you on no account ignore, is the one about never leaving your partner behind. I've worked with Sydney Bristow for years. She is my partner. Under no circumstances do I leave her behind."  
  
Murmur murmur murmur from around the room.  
  
_You'd better start running, kiddo._  
  
"Let me tell you how we see this, Mr. Vaughn. The only other person who witnessed this...self defense, let's call it, is Agent Bristow, who has been missing for the past three weeks. Those tapes from the bank in Wittenberg. Would you like to talk about them?"  
  
He gave a small shrug.  
  
"They were too grainy to tell anything. It was apparent that Agent Bristow—Sydney—was searching through some files, Agent Bristow—Jack—arrived, there are shots of her leaving alone, and that was it."  
  
"But they sent a team after her, didn't they? About a week ago. The CIA got tired of having her slip out of their fingers? This girl seems to be a regular Houdini. Why don't you tell us what happened with the team they sent over?"  
  
Oh God. He could see Dixon edge forward in his chair.  
  
"The CIA sent two agents, Agent Brown and Agent George, to retrieve her from a hotel in Lisbon when they got a tip that she was there. The retrieval did not go as planned."  
  
"What happened?"  
  
_"Vaughn...the team. There was a problem."_  
  
"Medics arrived to find that Agent Brown had been thrown from a fifteenth story balcony. Bristow was gone."  
  
"Bristow attacked those sent to go protect her? Interesting." 


	3. Carousel iii

**carousel, iii.**

****   
  
The feeling of just waking up hits him, the grogginess and blurry vision. Sunlight creeps under the bedroom door [did he sleep through the night?] as he attempts to clear his head, disoriented.  
  
Where is he?  
  
He eyes land on the picture of the giant type writer and...  
  
Oh.  
  
He sits up in bed, swimming in the soft sheets before heading for the door. He patters down the stairs quietly, trailing his fingers along the wall as he goes. Trips on his way down [damn cat] and stumbles to the bottom.  
  
He reaches the kitchen with its eighteenth century appliances that he's not sure has been used within the last twenty years [the Vaughns are not, and will never be, known for their cooking] and jerks his head up at the back kitchen door being wrenched open.  
  
The image of his mother with grocery bags in hand is strangely overly domestic for their family, a group of people who can neither cook nor clean.  
  
But she remarks about how this is such a pleasant surprise and he helps her with the groceries and she asks him how everything's going and they both have the artificial happiness about them, the kind that's overly sweet and leaves a strange after taste when it's done.  
  
She tells him about Cynthia down the road who broke her hip while gardening and Howard-Next-Door's good for nothing son who ended up gambling his college fund away at the tracks. Neighborhood gossip that she knows he won't be interested in, but it's something to fill the silence. She wants to know the status of her second son [a one Mr. Eric Weiss] and whether he's found a girl yet, because she has a friend who has a cousin who has a neighbor who has a daughter who would be just perfect for him.  
  
He assures her that he will pass along the message.  
  
She stops while putting a can of orange juice in the refrigerator and takes his hand, running her fingertips over his bare ring finger. She turns back to the brown paper bags, pulling out a carton of eggs.  
  
"::We're going to have to talk about this sooner or later.::"  
  
"::There's nothing to talk about. Lauren and I were married and now we're not. Where does the bread go?::"  
  
"::The pantry. You don't want to tell me what happened?::"  
  
"::Not really, no.::"  
  
He can't help but feel guilty as he snaps at her. Every visit, every phone call is his attempt to make up for the years she would have to talk to high school teachers, _I'm sorry Mrs. Vaughn, but Michael didn't show up to school again..._  
  
"::Maybe I just...maybe I just didn't know her the way I thought I did.::"  
  
It's the truth, technically. He really didn't know her the way he thought he did. No matter that the official end of their marriage probably occurred at the precise moment that he shot his wife into a mine shaft.  
  
But maybe that's irrelevant at this point. At least, he'll pretend it is.

---

They wanted to know where he last saw Sydney. Whether she had made contact with him. Where she was now.  
  
Palermo. No, she hasn't made contact with me. No, I don't know where she is now.  
  
Two truths and a lie.

---

[_But that used to be a game, didn't it? Two truths and a lie? Something little kids played at slumber parties? Tell people three things about yourself and make them guess which one is the lie?  
  
.My father worked for the CIA and died on a mission.  
  
It was always one of his truths and it so goddamn ridiculous that no, that must be one of Michael Vaughn's lies again, the boy has an overactive imagination, and that's putting it in the nicest way possible, chronic liar was more like it.  
  
There is probably something to say when your truths become less believable than your lies, although what it is, he's not sure.  
  
He would win every time. Because that's all that dead fathers are good for. Winning at childhood games_.]

---

He makes the soup, the stuff you just pour into a pot and forget about on a stove, and she makes the sandwiches, remarking about how this is about the extent of both of their culinary skills.  
  
Not true. He knows how to make the instant pasta with the hot water.  
  
"::How's work going?::" she asks while inspecting a suspicious looking tomato.  
  
"::Good. Bad. Fine.::"  
  
"::Rough patch?::"  
  
"::You could say that.::"  
  
He wonders how much of a disappointment he is to her at this point, between his marriage and his job. He knows how his mother feels about the issue of his work, in that she would prefer for him to be in an occupation where he's not at risk of losing limbs.  
  
She still cuts the crusts off his Wonder bread. He finds himself staring at it, his white plate with his white bread.  
  
"::Sorry::," she laughs. "::I...forget sometimes.::"  
  
"::It's okay. I hate the crusts anyway.::"  
  
He watches old reruns of _MASH _with her and listens to her chuckle along with the laugh track, despite the fact that she doesn't quite understand the humor in most of the jokes. It's a bit of a culture clash.

---

He tells her that he needs to get back to work [he doesn't], that they need him there [they don't], that he'll call her tomorrow [he won't.]  
  
The ride back is longer than he remembers, but his finger is weighted down with his ring this time. The radio announcers tell him that the Kings just lost again, but he won't believe them until he gets home and switches on ESPN.  
  
"Suspension of field status" is the term that they used. Suspension of field status. Indefinitely.  
  
"You'll have my letter of resignation by the end of the day," he mumbled to Dixon, feeling bodies and hands and legs push past him.  
  
He should've taken a cab out to Langley, a pale blue one that there seemed to be an overabundance of in Washington. He should've used one of their computers, poured himself a cup of too strong coffee, avoided stares. He should've clattered furiously on the keyboard, checked for spelling errors, printed it out, signed it with flourish.  
  
He typed it up on an old typewriter he found in his hotel room closet. A fifteen year old typewriter with an ink ribbon that smeared and a stuck "e" key. He was left with a document header of "LTTR OF RSIGNATION."  
  
Layers of himself peeled off with each keystroke.  
  
He realized later that he dated the paper off by a day and that he had somehow managed to misspell his own name. This would be how he would leave his legacy, apparently. Smudged ink on a crumpled piece of hotel paper with the Mariott logo in the corner.  
  
He snatched the paper out from the typewriter and left it on the scratchy comforter. Michal Vaughn's Lttr of Rsignation.  
  
He reached for another piece of paper and rolled it in crookedly, watching it crease and wrinkle. He stared at the keys, his fingers, the gashes under his fingernails that still haven't quite healed from where they slammed razors and needles under them, pushed the syringes up until he was bleeding and writhing, smirked as they mocked the always moral Agent Vaughn, you were such a good husband, pity it had to end up this way, won't break will he, tell us about the Passenger the Passenger tell us where to find the Passenger and maybe your death will be painless...  
  
**RLIF.**  
  
He stared at the printed word, dark marks on cream paper.  
  
**LIBRATION.  
  
PRID.  
  
FRDOM.  
**  
He wanted to feel it. He wanted to feel the relief and the liberation and the pride and the freedom.  
  
He always thought there would be someone beneath the rinds of honor and stability and history and trying to be the Right Person and do the Right Thing.  
  
He thought he could figure out who the person was underneath all that.  
  
Underneath it all, there is nothing.

---

No one ever really admits that the reason they join the CIA is because of some twisted desire to change the world. The Agency thrives on young, idealistic idiots. Feeds off of them. It's a pride issue for most new recruits. They're encouraged to have stupid ideas about themselves and what they're capable of. They're told that they'll become the unsung heroes of the free world. Oh, the American public will never truly realize all that you've done for them, but they would shake your hand, thank you personally, if they ever knew [you're told.] So go to your apartments, go to your restaurants, go to your supermarkets, and know that you can hold your head just a little bit higher than all the rest.  
  
The pride. No one really knows how high their chin can reach before the pride kicks in.  
  
His dad died young. Tragically. His son picked up the loose ends of a life incomplete.

---

He stops at a coffee shop that is, strangely enough, playing Christmas music.  
  
It is June.  
  
The air conditioning is on full blast and sends icy goose bumps up and down his arms. The waitress takes his order in monotone ["HellomynameisLouisahowmayIhelpyoutoday." Not a question. A statement. She will be serving you, whether you like it or not] and speaks with a dull New York accent. "Jingle Bell Rock" begins to blare out of the hidden speakers. It is probably a sign to start running.

---

The contents of his desk at work only filled one cardboard box, surprisingly. He always thought it would be more. Maybe he just didn't have as much as he though.  
  
The palm of his hand still dripped with blood, the results of fumbling roughly at the back of one of the drawers and feeling a shard of broken glass rip through his skin. Remnants of a picture frame he had long since smashed in a fit of frustration during a late night at the office. It was a discount type thing, one of those three-for-ten-bucks deals, the kind traditionally holding a family picture of some kind. He had agonized over it after coming back to the Agency when Sydney returned [from the dead—but no, she was never really dead, was she? He needs to stop attaching it to the end of that phrase], distressed himself over whether putting a photograph of him and Lauren on his desk would be obnoxiously flaunting their relationship. He ultimately left it at the bottom of the desk drawer. And then felt pangs of guilt as it collected dust.  
  
He handed in his clearance card and gun, letting his fingers linger longer than necessary over the cold metal. It had sent off a metallic gleam when they gave it to him all those years ago [some schools give out diplomas upon graduation; the Farm proudly handed their newly minted agents weaponry] but now lay tarnished on Dixon's desk. There will no longer be any use for the shoulder holster, either, but he held on to that one. The leather still smelled new.  
  
"You'll always have a job here. If you change your mind."  
  
He shrugged. He would not change his mind.  
  
People stared, but that wasn't what he should have been focusing on. His hearing seemed to block out everything but whispers of his name, not vicious gossip this time, but pity. Funny how quickly emotions can swing.  
  
There was nothing about their new found sympathy that appealed to him, gave them small smiles brimming with venom as they came to shake his hand.  
  
_"It was nice working with you, man."  
  
"Call me if you ever need anything. Maybe we could go to a game or something."  
  
"Good luck with everything. Hang in there."  
_  
Hang in _where_? He's spent his entire life being told to "hang in there." That things would eventually get better.  
  
He hated it all. Hated them all. Fuck waiting for things to get better, fuck hanging in there. He was ready to let go. Ready to let the bottom drop out of his life.

---

The coffee tastes like melted plastic, eliciting a cringe from him at each sip, but he orders another cup simply because he thinks it might be rude to inquire about the nearest Starbucks. They don't look like they get many customers, anyway.  
  
Vaughn reaches for a three day old newspaper from his bag and attempts to rub off the cheap ink from his fingers. He folds the heading over backwards, still slightly embarrassed that he's searching the Classified section.  
  
He could teach again, if he really wanted to. There was a job opening at a community college down in San Francisco. Their last French teacher had just been arrested for heroine possession. That person would not be back. They were desperate for a new professor by the time the new school year rolled around.  
  
But teaching was Sydney's dream. Not his.  
  
She "died" young. Tragically. Her boyfriend picked up the loose ends of a life incomplete.  
  
Maybe he's been living out the story lines of too many ghosts.

---

After four sleepless nights, he had come to the conclusion that David Letterman was highly overrated. But that was about it for his earth shattering revelations.  
  
He moved to shut off the blue glow of the television before heading back to his [their?] bedroom. The floorboards creaked beneath his steps, a reminder of just how old this apartment building really was. He'll fall right through the floor someday.  
  
He yanked at the dresser drawer [the third one always stuck] and suddenly stopped. Could've sworn he heard something from down the hallway, but no, nothing. He stripped the oxford off, carefully undoing the buttons, and pulled on the gray over shirt, when...  
  
He was officially losing his mind. Maybe he should've taken that therapy session they sent him to a week ago more seriously...  
  
He stared at himself in the full length mirror, him and all his angry scars. A white scratch right under his ear from where his sister had thrown a teapot at him when he was ten, a welt on his left wrist after scraping it against a rusted nail in Taipei, lasting red marks on his stomach and back from where he had been stabbed by his ex-lover and her aunt, respectively. More on his legs, too, if he shrugged off his jeans. And more under his skin, if anyone ever took the time to peel it off.  
  
He whirled around, almost positive he head something that time. He just stared into the empty darkness of his apartment.  
  
He turned back to his reflection, trying to figure out how he had become that man in the mirror, the man he hated more than anything.  
  
He came for her. But she must know that he would always come for her.  
  
He just always thought that she would come for him.  
  
Shadows aren't supposed to move like that, are they?  
  
And that shadow in the doorway was not supposed to cough.  
  
He spun towards the door as the dark figure lunged at him, hands wrapped around his neck. The man felt like he was packing at least 250, maybe 300, couldn't make out his face in the dimness and breathe breathe he couldn't breathe...  
  
He threw his knee into the man's stomach and heard him give a low grunt as he barreled backwards. But the stranger was on him again, gun pressed to his temple and his gun where the fuck did he leave his gun?  
  
The sickening realization that he handed it in to Dixon hit him and he crashed his forehead against the man's with a satisfying bang. He kicked the gun away, rolled over on top, but being on top really didn't offer him any advantage considering his opponent's weight and he was soon pinned on the floor again. He could feel the man's fist connect with his jaw, again, a third time, until the yellow spots making their way in and out of his vision seemed almost tangible. His stomach retched at the metallic taste of his own blood.  
  
He pulled at the nearest extension cord and heard his bedside lamp fall off the nightstand with a clamor [but that was the antique that belonged to Lauren's mother, wasn't it? Ah. Well.] he wrapped it haphazardly around the man's neck. The figure under him struggled, making gagging noises before finally throwing him off. Vaughn slammed back into a wall, wincing at the impact on the wound that still hasn't quite healed. The man was on him again and he moaned as he could feel his arm being twisted be, almost to breaking point...  
  
He wrapped his free arm around the man's neck in a last ditch attempt at control. More sounds of choking before a snap that sent chills through his blood. The man slumped to the floor, lifeless.  
  
And he was the one left breathing.

---

Seeing in hindsight is like watching a movie, although often far less pleasurable. At least with movies you can stop where you want, rewind, replay, fast forward. No such luxuries for retrospect, but maybe it's supposed to be like that. Death by memory doesn't exactly work when you can pick the recollections that you want.  
  
Isn't fear supposed to kick in when you're being attacked?  
  
Isn't there supposed to be some sort of twisted knot in your stomach after killing someone with your bare hands?  
  
But he was just left wondering how much more blood he would have to scrub off his hands.  
  
In hindsight, he realized that wasn't a normal reaction.

---

[_But, actually, it was Weiss who was the concerned one after all that, wasn't it? It was him who decided on setting up the team of agents in the apartment across the hall. Him who hand swept the entire place by hand. Him who pulled Vaughn out onto the rusted fire escape with black paint chipping off and wanted to know why the hell he wasn't worried that people were being sent after him. Tranqs. The man's gun wasn't even full of bullets, but tranqs. Something that was apparently a problem.  
  
He continued to peel off the paint from the metal railing. This was where the conversation begsn. The conversation that started with his friend suggesting he go on vacation ("You could...I dunno, Mike. You could go visit your mom for a few days") and ended in the one and only time he's ever had Eric Weiss storm off from him.  
  
It was the parts in between that he'd rather not think about. Which turns out to be pretty easy, in fact. As it would happen, he's gotten pretty damn good at repressing things. Feelings. Thoughts. It's all the same, really_.]

---

He pays the coffee shop bill and doesn't realize until he's driven a mile or two that he left a 250% tip.  
  
The streets feel more familiar as he goes, the sense of returning to where he belongs. Or should belong.  
  
The dimming light from the moon throws shadows over his apartment building, highlighting the crimson bricks burnt by the California sun. The hottest summer in years, the weather men are saying with repressed excitement. A heat wave's due in soon. The meteorologists play it nonchalantly, however, hating to admit that heat waves actually give them a reason to come into work. Los Angeles weather is pretty boring that way.  
  
He grabs the letters from his mailbox and nods to the receptionist who's been there ever since he can remember. He likes this guy, actually. He doesn't ask questions when the wife doesn't come home anymore.  
  
The elevator's broken again [surprise], all electricity seeming to go to the air conditioner that's in overdrive in the lobby. He walks to flight of stairs and stomps along noisily, just to fill up the dead air.  
  
Vaughn bangs once against the door across the hall from his apartment like a good boy, letting the team of agents know that he's back. As it would happen, they're not too bright. He'll sneak out the fire escape later.  
  
He lets himself in, reaches blindly for the light switch, set his bag down. His answering machine tells him that he has no new messages. Not that he was expecting any calls.  
  
He flips through the pack of envelopes in his hand, mentally sorting them into piles of bills and junk mail. Bill...bill...junk...bill...  
  
The stack falls to the floor as he grips one until his knuckles turn white and the cardboard creases.  
  
A postcard with a picture of a Ferris wheel on the front.  
  
More of Sydney's God forsaken postcards.  
  
He flips it over, hoping that he can some how cover up his anxiety with anger, because anger is his emotion of choice right now...  
  
**THE PEIR. THURSDAY. 11:30 PM.  
  
YOU KNOW WHERE.**


	4. Ferris Wheel i

**a/n: **I'm putting a HUGE angst warning on this chapter. It's just incredibly dark.

Anyway. You've been warned.

----------------

**chapter two. **

**ferris wheel. **

**---------------**

_Up 'n down  
Ferris wheel  
Tell me how does it feel  
To be so high...  
Looking down here  
Is it lonely?_

**-Norah Jones, _Carnival Town_**

He pretends that the postcard is not the reason he can't sleep and blames his insomnia on over-caffeination.

It really doesn't matter that "caffeination" isn't a real word.

The light bulb to the lamp resting on his night stand goes out with a tiny pop and he's left sprawled out on his bed in the dark, postcard still in hand. He can make out the glossy picture in the pale moon light. A Ferris wheel with bright lights projecting into the night.

He is lying on Lauren's sheets and reading Sydney's postcard. As he feels like he's been doing for the last year.

It should be a little more poetic than that. But no, not really. All it comes down to is bed sheets and flimsy pieces of cardboard, apparently.

And that thought is only a little bit depressing.

---

It's not a hard decision.

He just won't go.

Simple as that.

---

He jumps at the sound of the phone ringing, the shrillness piercing through the dark. He lunges for it, waits another ring, and fumbles it before finally bringing it to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Hi."

He pretends not to be disappointed at the sound of Weiss's voice when he longs for another.

"Hi."

"Look, I wanted to just...what I said a few days ago, with you and Sydney, I didn't..."

"Eric, it's fine."

"No, it's not. When I talked about her abandoning you, I didn't mean...it's...I don't have any right to lecture you on your relationship with her, and I..."

"I said, it's fine."

Silence. He can make out the static of his friend's breathing before Weiss speaks again.

"I'm getting off in half an hour. Feel like going somewhere?"

"Sure."

"You have to tell the agents guarding you that you're going out, though."

"So I can be followed all night? I'll pass."

"I'm serious. Enough with you sneaking out. You're going to get yourself killed, you know that? I'd rather not have to worry about exactly which dumpster we'll be finding you dismembered in."

"Okay."

"I want a real 'okay.'"

"This _is_ a real 'okay.'"

"Michael..."

"Who are you, my mother? I got it."

---

He makes a quick stop in the apartment across from his where the team is stationed **I'm going out**/_Where?_/**Church**/_It's a Wednesday night_/**See, it's religious intolerance like this that drove my family out of Fleury** before bounding down the stairs three at a time to the building's parking lot. Turn key. Shift gears. Head out of lot, nearly kill three people for failure of lifting eyes from staring wheel. There will be a black sedan with darkened windows following soon. And oh, like clockwork, there they are. Head over to nearest church 'The Church of All Knowing Mammals?' Damn it, they're never going to buy this. Circle four times, almost kill two more due to sudden memory lapse _Driver's Ed: And the red light means what, children?_ Lose previously mentioned sedan, drive slightly over the speed limit, hit curb while pulling into parking space.

Who the hell gave him a license, anyway?

They like the dingy bars. The ugly ones. The holes-in-the-wall where the barstools are covered in tacky red vinyl and jukeboxes in the corner. Honest to God, jukeboxes. Of course, they play only Elvis and the Supremes, something strangely out of sync with the rest of the bar, but jukeboxes none the less.

Not because either of them particularly like drinking in locations where a thin layer of sawdust covers the floors and where broken glass is the only source of glitz and glamour, but they're both pretty stupid drunks. And blurting out government secrets where there would actually be people is one of those very bad ideas that would inevitably lead to very bad things that would inevitably lead to very bad results.

So they haunt bars where no self-respecting stand-up citizen would ever frequent. Places that would only pass health inspection if rats were suddenly considered acceptable in kitchens.

Weiss is already there, nursing an undistinguishable drink and chatting up the bartender. He's a good guy, a man named Jim that knows their names and when to cut them off.

He slides onto the next seat, orders the usual.

It's not until his first swallow that he notices the thick folder under Weiss's nervous fingers.

"So, how have you been?" He's being too nice. His smile's too big. "I was talking to this friend I have over at UCLA, and he said if you wanted a job, he could maybe set something up for you..."

Vaughn says nothing, just stares at the clear liquid in his tumbler. Blatant disregard for the bright red warning on the bottle of pills sitting on his bureau at home "DO NOT MIX WITH ALCOHOL." It won't be the first time he'll be scolded by doctors for this type of thing what was it, two years ago? Two and a half? "You cannot continue mixing alcohol with your anti-depressants, Mr. Vaughn."

He takes a long sip, an act of defiance to...something. His body, maybe. He'll slowly poison the body that somehow managed to withstand torture by electric baton, torture by syringe, torture by betrayal, torture by spouse.

"What is this about, Weiss?"

"Nothing. This is just you and me, talking."

"You didn't bring me here to make a social call."

He's only half guessing here, but gets a look. The patented look. His eyes move back to the folder.

Weiss waits until Jim is at the other end of the bar, showing off family pictures and disconcerting self portraits drawn in magic marker by his kindergartener.

"They found some more stuff."

"What kind of stuff?"

"Lauren stuff."

Pause. Too long a pause to help keep up his "I'm-fine-that-my-wife-was-a-woman-who-betrayed-me-oh-yes-fine-fine-fine" façade.

"Dixon...thought that you would want to see it."

His fingernail digs into his left hand, drawing a tiny dash of crimson blood...

"I do."

"Mike, I...I really don't think this is a good idea. It won't help you reach closure."

He wants to bite back, something about Dixon sending him here to deliver the documents, not dispense advice from "Dear Abby," but he refrains and allows the words to burn on the tip of his tongue. "Jailhouse Rock" blares from the corner, bizarrely inappropriate at this point.

"How was your mom?" he asks, a half hearted attempt to change the subject.

"Fine. She wants to know if you've found a nice girl to settle down with yet, because if you haven't, she plays bridge every Tuesday night with a woman who happens to have a very pretty daughter about your age."

"Tell her I still have the 'Blind Date Disaster of '96' fresh in my memory. She's your mother. Why can't she interfere in your love life once in a while?"

Artificial smiles all around. They'll be pretend happy for now. His fingers still itch for those files.

"Legally, if you ask for them," Weiss begins, following his friend's gaze. "I have to give them to you."

"Then I'm asking for them."

"You can't undo this, you know."

He tells him that he doesn't care.

---

He misses the offices over at the Joint Task Force more than the job itself. A strange thing to long for, seeing as how it's just a bunch of cheap desks and malfunctioning water coolers, but it was clean cut, professional, smelled slightly of lemon Clorox. His own personal sanctuary since he was twenty-four.

A bit unhealthy, not that he thinks about it, but fights with Alice and anniversaries of deaths would lead to long hours spent in his overly tidy corner office. The scent of leather and smudged fingers covered in pen ink. It was comforting, in a strange kind of way.

The folders shake in his hand. He wants to rip them, destroy them; set them on fire and watch them burn. His jaw is clenched far too hard and he feels a migraine coming on. He's not sure how many more Tylenol he can get away with taking.

Tainted documents. He can't take them home, put them away in a desk drawer. The telltale heart. They'll still be there, as he lies away in bed, just sitting there, his shattered marriage in charcoal gray on the pages.

The warehouse. Ugly metallic chain link fences and lime colored plastic chairs that always looked as if they'd been stolen from the nearest elementary school.

It's still there, isn't it?

---

This place should've been torn down years ago.

It's evident that whatever security measures the CIA used to keep people out clearly weren't enough. Broken bottles of Heinekin and half smoked cigarettes now litter the floor. Self storage facilities are now the hot spots for partly stoned teenagers on Friday night, apparently. This feels wrong, somehow, and he has the sudden urge to grab a broom and sweep the years away.

Well, what was he expecting, exactly? For this to remain a shrine to the days when Sydney would proudly show off the bruises she received on the latest mission, courtesy of three Russian thugs and a two-by-four?

"Don't you want to hear about how I got that one?" she would ask with a grin she tried to hide.

"Not particularly. Looks like it was pretty painful. Hold still, you've still got a piece of metal in your back."

"You really don't want to hear?"

"Tomorrow," he sighed, reaching for the first aid kit. "Tell me tomorrow."

The crates are still there. He pulls one past the yellowing pile of alcohol labels and sets it in the center of the floor. It makes a screeching sound as it goes. Fingernails on blackboards.

And the files are still in his left hand_. Alice in Wonderland_, toxic bottles with friendly messages.

Drink me. Drink me. DrinkmeDrinkmeDrinkmeOpenmeOpenmeOpenme...

He rips the giant envelope open with a satisfying tear and thinks of how he needs to be mind numbingly drunk right now to be dealing with this. His breathing becomes painfully staggered. Every place she went, every person she met with, every thing she bought, it's catalogued perfectly, meticulously. A life summed up in dates and times.

A life summed up in numbers.

He drinks it all in as fast as he can handle. Hotel records of places he never stayed at, grainy photographs of her kissing men who, no matter how hard he squints his eyes, are not him, purchases of documents that he never saw.

He stops at the word "clinic."

One shot too many.

He thinks he may be sick.

---

He burns them in his kitchen sink at home, watching the papers smolder and curl. The faucet turns on at the flick of his wrist as the water bubbles out and washes the ashes down the drain.

He won't think about it. Won't break down.

That night, he dreams of rusted fighter jets refueling and taking off from launch pads made of bottle caps. Emerald explosions light up the sky, now the shade of rotting eggplants. If he runs fast enough, he might be able to reach the horizon by dawn...

He wakes up exhausted.

---

Thursday creeps up on him, like mist sneaking in after a storm. He checks his calendar, just to be sure. "Good Morning America" tells him that it _is_, in fact, a beautiful Thursday morning, and if he sticks around, they'll inform him of ways to eat a healthier breakfast. He munches at his stale Cap'n Crunch in defiance.

It is Thursday and he is not going.

He briefly considers watching a series of infomercials for Wonder Mops before hunting for his hockey skates.

He follows every traffic law in the book and takes the long way there. He's in no hurry. He's got nowhere to go.

The next few hours are occupied by attempting to suppress hypothetical baby names while half heartedly pushing a puck around the rink.

_She never loved you._

He plays a game of hockey with himself and loses. How is that even possible?

---

Dusk. Vaughn closes the drapes to block out the setting sun and flips through channels with the battered remote that he always manages to lose amid the sea of couch cushions.

BANKRUPTCY FIRM HIRED BY AIRLINE—click—GET THE CAR OF YOUR DREAMS NOW—click—I TOLD YOU, GAVIN, I'M NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL—click—EL PERRO FUE A LA PLAYA Y—click—OUR FIVE DAY CHAMPION WITH A GRAND TOTAL OF OVER—click—

Ruthie Baker used to come and watch movies with him, when he was ten and lived down the street from her. He _hated_ Ruthie Baker. She would always tell him which actors had fake British accents, which were going through messy divorces, which were morphine addicts. He didn't want to hear about how the blood was really ketchup and the snow, in fact, soap flakes. He pointed out with pride one day that one of the charioteers in "Ben Hur" really _was_ trampled and killed. She just rolled her eyes and he pretended that she hadn't ruined movies completely for him by explaining that they were filmed in Hollywood basements.

He stares at his watch as it ticks down slowly. 57...58...59...

He won't go. He won't go he won't go he won't go.

Shit.

---

It occurs to him, as he watches the ocean slam violently into the beige shoreline, that this is the same place, the very spot that the two of them stood at, on the night of beepers and naïve sermons about keeping hope alive. He stares down at his feet and tries to adjust them, put them in the exact place he stood when Sydney took his hand for the first time. A weak attempt to make it back to the people they were five years ago.

Olive colored splinters from the unfinished wood cut into his fingers. Not enough to draw blood, but they make him wince.

Angry clouds threatening to drench tourists hang low overhead, turning the night sky a bluish-orange. He wants it to rain, pour, simply so he can pull his jacket in close and run down the boardwalk. Just to feel a sense of urgency.

It's too humid. The thick denim in his jeans form to his legs and stick. A few idiot swimmers brave the surf. He glances down at his watch. Again.

And she's still not here.

---

Another fifteen minutes crawl by.

The air smells of raspberry cotton candy and salt.

---

Ten more minutes. He makes improbably excuses for her in his head and leans up against the pier.

Neon lights shine through the darkness from the mini amusement park: acid green, Pepto Bismal pink, blood red. Carnival town. Bulbs on the Ferris wheel flash irregularly.

Almost as if...

No. Nononono.

This is just getting ridiculous.

---

The man running the Ferris wheel has no face. His blonde hair sticks out like straw from his head and his purple lips would like to know if Vaughn wants to get on; it's empty, except for the shadow of a solitary woman.

Yes, he replies, he would like to get on.

"You're late."

It's the first thing the figure says, her voice low to the point of cracking.

"What can I say? I was given bad directions."

And the ride begins to rotate.

He should be the one to break the silence.

Instead, he feels the Ferris wheel jerk to a stop at the top. He stares intently at nothing in particular.

"I almost though you wouldn't come," she says finally.

"That would be pretty uncharacteristically of me, now wouldn't it? I mean, why _shouldn't_ I come when you call? But when I need you, surprisingly, you're no where to be found."

Beat.

"That's not fair and you know it. You weren't exactly banging down my door every night to see how I was doing when you were married to Lauren."

"That was different."

"How the hell was that different?"

"I would never have left you like that!" he explodes. "Do you know what it was like, to wake up in that safe house in Italy to find you gone after you had promised you would be there? Jesus Christ. Lauren was dead, I was coughing up blood from being stabbed by your lovely aunt...and you didn't care enough to stick around?"

He suddenly wants to take it back, take it all back. The words, the marriage, the two years, everything. Rewind to when their personal problems could be solved temporarily by autumn walks in the park.

"I'm sorry," he stutters. "I didn't mean—"

"You're right, though."

Her eyes glitter in the light of the crescent moon. The Cheshire cat's smile.

"I've abandoned you and left you and you don't deserve it and I'm sorry I'm so sorry..."

Every other word is racked with sobs. He reaches out to touch her back lightly. Not to console her, but to make sure he's not just talking to a silhouette.

"...and the agent I didn't mean to I didn't know who he was working for I got scared I...I didn't mean to kill him..."

It takes Sydney a few minutes to collect herself. He wants to know about the bank, about Wittenberg, but he refrains, allowing his arm to instinctively curl around her waist. She leans her head cautiously on his shoulder. He needs to hate her, for his sanity, but finds himself softly stroking her hair.

"I'm leaving. On Saturday," she whispers.

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know."

"Are you coming back?"

"No."

He can feel silent raindrops begin to fall against his face. Pedestrians below run for cover.

"I want you to come with me."

"I can't."

"What do you have left here?"

He doesn't know.

---

She leaves eventually. She has to; shadows seem to grow faint and disappear in the light. But not before she kisses him, long and tender and slow. He's left touching his lips where hers were, soft and tasting faintly of vanilla.

His legs seem to get the idea before his head and he takes off running, heading frantically into the direction she wandered off in, but she's already disappeared into the dark crowds. Ghost.

The rain falls harder, warm drops of water that do nothing to cool down the temperature. Los Angeles is too hot, too damp, too crowded, too lonely.

Why does anyone come here?

---


End file.
